Butterfly Tattoo Read online

  “I forgot, sweetheart. You know that.”

  She heaves a weary sigh. “You always forget,” she says. “But Daddy wouldn’t. He would’ve remembered.”

  “You’re right. He would have.” She turns to me, her ocean-blue eyes widening in shock at my new strategy. But why not admit the truth? I have no illusions. Her daddy would have done a better job at this single parenting drill than I’ll ever manage on my own. No wonder Andrea’s so bitter. She landed second unit with me, not first, and I’ll never be able to close that gap.

  “You didn’t get me on the Evermore set, like you said.”

  “I said I’d try.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “It was a closed set!” I cry, blowing my cool, and a thin smile of satisfaction forms on her lips. It’s like she lives for this now, to see me lose control. It’s what she’s always after. Maybe because she needs some kind of reaction from me, anything other than this numbness that has such a stranglehold around my heart.

  She says nothing else, just stares out the window of the truck again, outlining an invisible pattern on the dusty pane with her fingertip, something that only she can see. I clutch the steering wheel tensely, the familiar silence smothering us as we edge along the 101 toward home. Long damn way there, too, at least in this kind of traffic. Really need to sell the house and move somewhere closer to the studio, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Can’t bring myself to let go of Alex that way, not when all of our memories are tied up in that place. Well, maybe not all of them, but certainly most of the significant ones.

  Just the thought of leaving our old bungalow on Mariposa Way makes my throat clench painfully. Nothing feels more like home than those eucalyptus trees that shade our tiled rooftop, or the thick jasmine vines knotted around our front steps. I can picture Andrea like it’s yesterday, maybe four or five years old, collecting handfuls of those white flowers as a gift for me. Here, Daddy! I picked them ’cause they’re beautiful, just like you!

  We have family history that practically hums all around that house. It’s in the crevices of the wooden floorboards, on the craggy paths that lead up the canyon hillside away from the garden, and in the sun-drenched windows of the morning room. Every direction I turn, our life resonates there, and maybe that’s because memories have a spiritual life all their own. Where there’s been suffering, the dark atmosphere hangs over a place forever, becomes a kind of energy that’s imprinted in the air. Like at Auschwitz or Gettysburg, or even Fredericksburg, where I grew up, where the bodies of men once fell by the moment. Ghosts before their bodies had even hit the ground.

  But when something’s been perfect and beautiful, as our family once was then the emotions linger like the perfume of angels. No wonder all my memories of that house are touched by sweet-scented jasmine.

  We moved to Studio City because Alex practiced pediatric oncology at UCLA, so it made sense to live in that neighborhood, an affordable family one closer to the hospital. That was more important than buying a house near the studio, like West Hollywood where I wanted to be. Allie hated my insane hours on the set, wanted me home more, so we fought over that decision. In fact, I remember mouthing off that some of us weren’t doctors pulling down a couple hundred grand a year, that some of us really worked for a living.

  God, the scorching, blue-eyed look I earned for that one. Alex was one of the warmest people I’ve ever known, but he could pack a feisty temper on occasion. The old stereotypes about redheads were true, I guess, because that day I got a pretty pointed lecture on the rewards of higher education versus those of pissing off my father by joining the army at age eighteen. That was okay, ’cause I also got a damned passionate kiss at the end. Making up was always the sweetest part of Allie’s firestorms.

  I swear those arguments over buying our first home together were some of the worst we ever had. Looking back, it’s easy to see that there were other tensions at play, deeper stresses about commitment and starting a family. About even being a couple in the first place. My fears over that issue alone were threatening to separate us like the San Andreas Fault. Besides, having kids and settling down is already pretty big stuff when you’re only in your twenties, even if you’re a traditional couple.

  Being with Allie scared the crap out of me, all right, because I’d never gone that way before. I’d always been straight as an arrow before him. But I realized even then that love doesn’t bother with those kinds of distinctions. It just falls over you like a mystery, and once it does, you’re gone for life.

  By then I understood, too, that I was with Alex Richardson because I couldn’t be anywhere else.

  “You missed the exit.”

  “What?” I blink, staring ahead of me at the car-clogged freeway in disbelief.

  “That was our exit back there.” Our daughter explains the facts to me with the patient condescension of an eight-year-old.

  “Damn.”

  “Daddy didn’t like you cussing in front of me.”

  “No, you’re right, sweetie. He didn’t.”

  Your daddy didn’t like a whole lot of my wicked ways, I think, maneuvering into another lane of traffic. Now, thanks to my error, it will be another thirty minutes before we make it home.

  Yeah, Memory Lane can be a painful detour, all right. Can take you places you really don’t want to go, and then send you scrambling for hours to recover.

  Sometimes you never do.

  When someone dies, you’re left with mountains of memories. At first, you rush headlong at all of them, fists opening greedily, desperate to hold onto your loved one, no matter the cost, but over time, particular snapshots come into focus. They’re the ones that surface continually in your dreams and mental drifting, popping up on radar when you least expect them.

  For me, I’m haunted by Alex’s last trip to New York City. A random memory, really, but I think about him calling me from there last March. It was lunchtime back east, and I was starting my workday at the studio when my cell phone rang. I flipped it open, and Al greeted me with his warm, booming voice. “Can you hear them?”

  “Hear what, baby?” I asked softly, turning away so the other guys wouldn’t eavesdrop.

  “Listen, okay?” He laughed, and there was the sound of blaring horns and traffic through the receiver. I could practically smell the exhaust fumes and late winter snow he’d described in an e-mail earlier that morning. But irritation rankled through my system, too, because he’d plowed right into my workday, not even bothering with a decent greeting.

  Then I heard them. Chiming bells that rang out in a lovely, melancholy voice. Despite myself, I smiled for a moment. It was such an Alex thing to do, to call me for something like that. Everywhere he went in life he discovered an adventure, found something beautiful to appreciate in the midst of stress and chaos.

  But the thing was, I didn’t hear those church bells. Not really. I was too self-conscious that the guys might be listening in, and frustrated with Alex for not asking if I was busy, if I could even talk in the first place. When he came back on the line, a little breathless, he said, “They’re the bells of St. Patrick’s. I’m sitting here on the steps, and I wanted you to hear them, too.”

  “Cool,” I mumbled, cautiously watching my boss, a craggy old-school union guy, walk closer. I’d never come out to him about Alex, and I wasn’t about to start right then.

  “Tomorrow’s Ash Wednesday,” Alex said. “I think I’m going to try to make a service.”

  For a moment, I pictured his freckled forehead, a sooty cross marking the center of it like a bull’s eye. Something about that somber image made me shiver despite the morning heat.

  “You sure you want to do that?” I asked, feeling spooked for reasons I couldn’t possibly verbalize, but he only laughed at me, so I rushed to add, “I mean, aren’t they already lining up today like it’s a Stones concert or something?”

  “Now, Michael, don’t forget I’m a good Catholic boy,” he teased, knowing that I never darkened a church door. Well, ex
cept for our commitment service, which was the one time he ever got me to attend an ecclesiastical ceremony. No wonder we could never agree on getting Andrea baptized.

  “Yeah, Father Roberto would be proud of you,” I mumbled, rubbing my palm over my heart. I couldn’t shake the eerie shadow that had fallen over me, the vague sense of dread. “You out of the conference?” I asked, trying to turn the subject in a sunnier direction.

  “I’m taking a walk during the lunch break,” he said. Suddenly a passing siren blared loudly through the phone, drowning out his words, until I caught the end of some amputated sentence: “…and that I wish you and Andie were here with me.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” I half-whispered into the phone, eyeing my boss, but he was busy at his desk now.

  “I bought you a present yesterday.” I could practically hear the smile in his voice; nobody loved a surprise like my Alex. A terrible pang of guilt nagged at my heart for having been irritable, even if he hadn’t known it. He’d been gone for days and I’d begun to miss him a whole damn lot.

  “Let’s bring Andrea here for her birthday in the fall,” he continued. “Wouldn’t that be great? To really do the city together, all three of us?”

  “Definitely.”

  “We could take her ice skating at Rockefeller Center.” I had a momentary vision of holding Andie’s small hand in mine, leading her in an awkward circle around the rink while Alex videoed us together. But then my boss stood from his desk, clipboard in hand, making a beeline right for me.

  “Let’s talk about it when you get back.” I wanted to hurry Al off the phone before my boss realized I was on a personal call. After we said goodbye, I wondered what I’d missed when the siren had silenced his words. It seemed like something critical, something I needed to know. In fact, I almost called him back to ask, but then with the day’s usual hectic tension, I forgot about it completely. Never even thought about it again—or about him sitting there on those cold steps, phoning me just to hear the bells. Not until he was dead, and by then I could hardly think of anything else.

  God, Alex loved me.

  He truly did. I just hadn’t learned yet that time is elastic: it stretches and gives, far more graciously than it probably should, and then one day, when you least expect it, something simply ruptures, and your sheltered life is done.

  No, I couldn’t have imagined then that Alex would be stone dead nearly three months from that very day. Long before the fall or Andrea’s birthday arrived, or even before we could accomplish a fraction of our dreams.

  Hard to believe that only those cathedral bells would remain, haunting me like the refrain of some long-forgotten hymn from my childhood.

  ***

  Not sure how long I’ve been on this sofa, but I must’ve drifted off because the living room is completely dark except for the glow of the television. My head feels like someone’s been pounding a dagger into the center of the thing. A big, gauzy swollen melon of a head, thanks to the five beers I’ve already tossed back. Thank God it’s Friday night.

  I feel around on the floor beside the sofa, and find a sixth bottle still open. The ceiling spins a little; the blue, artificial light from the television flickers above me in melancholy shades, like some eerie heavenly host watching to make sure I’m still alive.

  My eyes drift closed as the warm beer slides down my throat, cloying, but at least I find some release.

  Used to be I’d sit outside on nights like this one. Go out on the deck and inhale the spring night air. Maybe smoke a cigar, read the paper. Wait for Alex to come home from the hospital so we could unwind together over a glass of wine. Used to be I treasured putting Andrea to bed; it was something precious, and if Alex got home in time, we did it together. It always felt like the three of us had really formed a family then. Now I only want to close up shop at night. I can barely focus on her bedtime story anymore, much less enjoy reading it to her.

  She knows it, too. She knows it, but I don’t think she even cares at this point. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’d rather live with anyone else but me.

  My eyes drift shut and I imagine that I can hear the garage door opening, Alex home for the night. My heart beats faster in expectation, because through the hazy beer scrim, I half-believe it’s a possibility. There’d be the familiar jangle of his keys dropping on the kitchen counter, then maybe Andrea’s feet slapping exuberantly across the hardwoods. “Daddy!” she’d cry, flinging herself into his arms. The love of both our lives, come home once again.

  Tears sting my eyes; I blink them back and take a long swig of the beer again. Anything to numb the pain. I maneuver the bottle onto the floor carefully, rubbing at my temples, when I’m jolted back to reality by Andrea’s whispery voice. “Rebecca has a scar like mine,” she says, and my eyes snap wide open.

  I’ve spent a year trying to get to this place with her, to get her to talk about the accident. All my efforts to this point have met with nothing but stony silence.

  When I jerk upright on the sofa, planting both feet squarely on the floor, the near-empty bottle of beer clatters over, a sticky puddle forming beneath my socked foot. But I don’t even notice, not really. My attention’s trained only on her.

  She stares at the floor, tugging on the sleeve of her long cotton nightgown self-consciously. She wants to say more; I sense it. God, I want to help her do this, too, but I just don’t want to spook her. I don’t want to do a thing to chase my little girl away. I regulate my breathing, remembering what our counselor has said: it has to be on her terms, her timetable.

  Andrea shifts her weight from foot to foot, looking up at me through her dusty auburn lashes. She’s waiting for something.

  Very tentatively, I begin to speak. “Tell me about it,” I urge with a nod. “About her scar.” I know it’s a risk to press her, but I need to be closer emotionally.

  She takes one step toward me, chewing on her bottom lip. “It’s on her face.” She touches her cheek with a fingertip and draws a line that reaches the edge of her mouth. “Right here. Didn’t you see it?” She scrunches her face into a strange, twisted imitation.

  Only now do I realize how little I glimpsed of Rebecca O’Neill. I know she seemed attractive, that something about her got to me. In fact, I spent the rest of the workday trying to shake off that reaction, the way she’d drawn me in. Now I can’t believe I missed so much of her story.

  “No, it was dark, sweetheart. Tell me.”

  Andrea stops then, wrapping her small, pale arms around herself in a bear hug. “Her scars still hurt sometimes, too. That’s what she said.”

  I fight the urge to reach for her, to try and hold her. Like some hostage negotiator, I’m forced to play observer in my own family, as she edges nearer by the moment. “Like mine does.”

  My lips part and what I want to say is that I’m sorry. Sorry that my sweet little girl has to hurt at all, that she worries about a scar nobody else can even see. Sorry that her daddy’s nearly a year dead and all she has left in this frightening world is me.

  But I don’t, and before I can figure out what I should say next, she’s already gone, vanished in a blur of white nightgown and coppery red hair. Then there’s the sound of her bedroom door slamming shut, and the whole house gasps in shuddered reaction.

  All I can do is bury my face in my hands and wish like hell that Alex were still here with me. Because I don’t have a clue how I’ll ever keep doing this on my own.

  I wake the next morning with a jackhammer pounding straight through the core of my skull. Apparently some crack team of demons is on an expedition to my medulla oblongata, and are causing hell along the way. Bravely, I open one eye in my own version of a recon mission, but the sunny spring morning sends me diving back for my pillow with a muffled groan of agony. God, somebody stop me the next time I decide to drink a twelve-pack of Heineken by myself.

  Why is it that the denials and oaths of abstinence always make so much sense in the morning, but nighttime brings the same bottomless swell of loneliness all ove
r again?

  I bury my face in the quilt, and fight a tide of nausea that rises high. I hear muted sounds from the living room, and know that Andrea must already be up watching television or playing Wii. But that doesn’t explain the homey smells drifting my way, something like eggs and bacon and maybe even fresh-ground coffee.

  With another deep groan I roll onto my back, sniffing the air as I rub my eyes. It’s got to be my imagination; there can’t actually be breakfast cooking in the next room. Then I remember. With all the clarity of a boom lowering, I know that I’ve screwed up big-time. Marti’s here to help with my taxes, exactly like she’s supposed to be, and I’m the one who’s fallen way off schedule.

  I force myself to sit up in bed, the whole room gyrating and pulsating angrily. Staring in the mirror over the dresser, I hardly recognize the guy staring back at me: wiry curls askew, hollow circles under his eyes, pasty complexion shadowed by an outbreak of beard.

  I’m pathetic, and I know what dear Marti’s going to say the minute she lays eyes on me. “Lord, Warner, you look like hell!”

  That’s why she’s my best friend—and a great ex-girlfriend, at that. Sometimes in the past year I’ve almost wondered if Alex didn’t will her to me by divine act of life choice. Wondered whether the two of them, back in kindergarten and lining up for recess, made a sacred pact even then. That Marti would introduce Alex to his life partner, then watch over that poor guy’s lost soul once he’d been left alone at the end of the day.

  I’m sure that Alex would tell me to be gentler with her, not so grumpy and difficult. And he’d remind Marti that although I may not talk about it much, I’m lost without him. As for our other best friend? I’m not sure how he’d answer Casey’s constant grumbling that I won’t go out with our gay friends—that I only want to stay home every weekend. Alex would probably say what he learned the hard way: that it’s never a good idea to push me about anything.